Mirror Vale — The Fractured Reflection
**
Cold air licked the hull as dawn scattered light across the cliffs. Below, a valley of mirror-crystal unfolded, mountain walls layered in mirrored wards that caught the morning sun and bent it into ribbons of white and gold. A landscape so bright it hurt to look at for too long, less a place than a valley and more a refraction.
The ship drifted in slow descent, its reflection splitting and multiplying across the slopes. For a moment, three ships hung there, ghosts of itself, gliding in silent imitation.
Lys shaded her eyes. "If that's not a bad omen, I don't know what is."
Therrin adjusted his optics. "They've lined their wards with crystallite mirrors. Each surface redirects Breath. The entire valley's one big resonance trap."
Khalen nodded absently. The place felt mis-tuned, like a song a half-step off. Every movement bounced back at him half a second late, like the world hesitated to answer.
A tone rang out, clear, sharp, and deliberate. From the cliffs, mirrored spires shifted to align. The light struck the ship's underbelly in a single blinding beam.
Pain flashed up Khalen's left arm, not in flesh, but in the absence of it. Phantom fingers clenched hard enough to make his shoulder jerk.
He sucked in a breath through his teeth, and tasted copper like he'd bitten a coin.
OH's voice crackled dryly from the console. "They're scanning us. Oh, how adorable. I taught them that trick."
Khalen grimaced. "How about you tell them to stop before they fry us?"
"Relax," OH said. "They're polite. So far."
The beam slid off the hull, and the Valkyrie's runes stuttered, just once, as if the ship forgot its own shape and then remembered with a shiver.
They landed on a terrace carved directly into the mountainside, its floor so polished that even footprints left a faint echo of light. Villagers gathered in silence, wrapped in translucent shawls that shimmered with the valley's glow. Their eyes were pale, almost silver, pupils narrow like blades.
An elder approached, leaning on a staff made of bent mirror-crystal shards. "Travelers," she said, her voice crisp as cracking frost. "We saw your shadow fall across the peaks. Are you emissaries of the Triune?"
Her gaze slid past Khalen and fixed on the crystal beneath him, on the version of him standing in the floor.
"They come in threes," she added, quieter, as if stating a law. "And their shadows never split."
Lys smiled faintly. "If we were, would we tell you?"
The elder considered that, then inclined her head. "Caution is survival." She lifted her staff and tapped it once against the polished stone. "Come. Speak under the mirrored sun, where every word has an edge."
As they followed her, the villagers performed a small, practiced motion. One by one, they turned the shimmer of their shawls inward, dulling the reflective weave as if closing an eyelid.
Only then did their attention settle fully on the newcomers, as though the mirrors should not be allowed to learn strangers too quickly.
Inside the hall, walls of living crystal pulsed with stored light. Every sound came back softer, rounded by the resonance. As they spoke, their own reflections whispered fractions of their words half a breath late.
Before anyone asked another question, the elder lifted her staff again. The room quieted, not from fear, but from habit, like a household pausing mid-breath.
A young priest stepped forward, robe hem brushing the polished floor. He carried three bowls stacked carefully in his hands, crystal so clear it nearly vanished until it caught the light and threw it back in hard, clean arcs.
He did not look at Khalen, or Lys, or Therrin. He looked at the floor, at the reflections of them. Then he spoke, voice calm as practice. "Names," he said, and after a beat, repeated it, softer, "Names."
It was the same question, asked to two audiences.
Lys gave hers. Therrin gave his. Khalen hesitated a fraction too long, then answered.
The young priest nodded, as if their reflections had replied a half-step late.
Then he set the bowls on his head, one atop another, balanced on a small ring of mirror-shard wrapped in cloth. He climbed onto a narrow plank of polished stone that rested on a single rounded pillar, a fulcrum like a bone beneath crystal. The plank shifted the moment his weight settled, rolling slightly, forcing his ankles to adjust in a smooth, controlled correction.
No one blinked until his weight steadied.
He stepped forward.
Each step was deliberate, heel-to-toe, as if the floor could bite. The bowls stayed perfectly still above him, and yet Khalen felt the tension in it, the quiet violence of balance maintained.
The priest raised his hands, not for show, but for control, and with a small breath he flicked one bowl upward.
It rose without wobble, turning once, catching the hall's light.
A note rang out, clear and thin as ice.
The sound did not fade. It caught in the mirrored walls and returned layered, chorded, building into something like music.
The bowl split midair, separating into three ghost-images, each one a fraction out of phase. Spectral copies that spun beside it like doubles deciding to be real.
As they turned, light poured off their rims in sheets, and in that falling light, the air filled with shapes, flat at first, then sharpening into scenes, Breath-held, translucent as a held memory.
A cliff face, carved and warded. Hands laying mirror-shards into stone. A river of light dragged through a valley like a scar. Figures in veils moving in threes across a ridge, their shadows wrong, refusing to split even as the sun fractured around them.
Khalen's pulse kicked. He could not tell if the figures were history or doctrine. In Mirror Vale, the two would have been the same thing.
The second bowl rose.
Another chime, deeper this time, and the scenes shifted. A child pressed to a mirror, an elder's hand covering the crystal. A man screaming with no sound as his reflection stood calm, watching. The image snapped away before it could settle, like the hall decided it had shown enough.
OH's voice murmured in Khalen's belt, almost amused, almost careful. "You see? Polite. They greet guests with a demonstration of controlled instability."
Khalen didn't answer. His phantom fingers had gone tight again without him noticing.
The third bowl rose, and for a breath, the priest's footing slipped. Not a fall, just a stutter in the plank's roll. The bowls above him tilted a hair, and the music sharpened, the chord turning dangerous, the mirrored walls humming like they wanted to join in.
The priest corrected instantly, a smooth, practiced recovery, and the hall exhaled.
The bowls settled back onto his head as if nothing had happened. The spectral scenes folded inward and vanished, swallowed by the living crystal.
The elder watched Khalen's reflection instead of his face. "Now," she said, "we can speak."
Therrin ran his hand along a mirrored panel. "These surfaces hold Breath like lungs. I think they're alive."
OH murmured through Khalen's belt, "Curious, not alive."
One of the villagers flinched at the voice, then snapped their shawl edge up, angling it toward the floor.
Not toward Khalen.
Toward the skull's reflection, like they were trying to pin the sound down where it landed.
"Who speaks?" the villager demanded.
Khalen touched the skull. "An old friend."
The elder's eyes narrowed. "A friend with no body leaves deep prints in crystal." She paused, then spoke as if reciting something remembered. "Be careful. The mirrors remember what they see. Not all reflections are kind."
Mirror Vale's terrace had gone quiet again, the kind of quiet that came after light did something it should not have been able to do.
The Valkyrie sat on the polished stone with her runes dimmed to a low, patient pulse. Below the hull, the valley's mirrors still held her shape in broken pieces. A ship made of reflections, waiting to decide which one was real.
Khalen had gone below to check the cargo lashings, more out of habit than need. Lys was still down with the traders, laughing in that bright, dangerous way she had when she liked a place too much to trust it.
Therrin remained at the edge of the reflecting pools, notebook open, stylus hovering, eyes pinned on the water.
In the pool, his face returned in three faint versions, each one delayed by a fraction, like the valley could not agree on the timing of him.
From Khalen's belt, OH spoke into the quiet, casual as ever. "If you fall in, I am not retrieving you. I have no hands and you have a worrying fondness for drowning in research."
Therrin snorted, the sound sharp enough to make his reflection flinch.
He wrote anyway.
Not the joke, not the valley's resonance pattern.
He wrote the phrase OH had tossed out earlier, like it was nothing.
I taught them that trick.
He stared at the ink until it stopped looking like ink and started looking like a door he had not meant to open.
Therrin cleared his throat.
He did it again, softer, as if the first attempt had been too loud.
"You say things," Therrin began, then stopped, because that was uselessly broad. His stylus tapped once against the page, a small noise in all that polished quiet. "You phrase things a certain way."
"Oh no," OH said. "Not my phrasing. Anything but my phrasing."
Therrin's mouth twitched. He hated that it twitched. He hated even more that he was relieved it did.
He angled his notebook so the mirror-pool caught the page. Not for show. Just because it felt safer to look at the words reflected than to look directly at the skull.
"This," he said, and tapped the line. "It's nothing on its own. I know that. I'm not… making an accusation."
"Mm," OH replied, neutral enough to be dangerous.
Therrin inhaled. Let it out. His reflections did the same, late.
"In the archives," he said, like he was reading from a report he wished he could hide behind, "there are patterns. Across regions that never met. Same narrative shape. A figure appears after a rupture. Knows how to do something the age is not supposed to know yet."
He paused, then added quickly, as if the next clause could soften the first. "Could be embellishment. Archivists collect patterns because we like them. We mistake repetition for truth. I'm aware."
OH said nothing. Not helpful, not mocking. Just listening.
Therrin swallowed. He glanced down at the water again. The mirrors offered him a dozen versions of his own face, none of them brave.
"When you said you taught them," Therrin continued, "it made me think of that pattern. That's all. A… professional itch." He gave a small, apologetic shrug that felt absurdly human in this place. "If a phrase lands too neatly on an old pattern, I write it down. Later I decide whether it's meaningful or whether I'm inventing ghosts."
"And," OH said gently, "you've decided to do that deciding out loud."
Therrin exhaled, half a laugh, half surrender. "Yes. Regrettably." He slid his thumb along the notebook's spine until the leather warmed under it.
A thin wind slid over the terrace. Somewhere in the valley a mirror chimed, reacting to a note nobody had played.
Therrin stared at his notebook like it could answer for him. "You don't have to answer. I'm not asking you to explain yourself." He winced at his own word choice. "Sorry. That came out like a tribunal."
"It did," OH agreed, cheerful again. "But I've endured worse. Once, I was cross-examined by a man who believed the moon was a hoax."
Therrin's laugh came out before he could stop it. He hated that too, because it warmed the air between them.
He sobered, gently. "I'm trying to keep my head honest. That's it."
OH's light shifted, not brighter, just focused, like someone lowering their voice in a crowded room. "Then let me help."
Therrin blinked, surprised.
OH continued, careful but still himself. "Sometimes I speak like I remember because I do. Sometimes I speak like I remember because I'm guessing, and I'm good at guessing. That's the uncomfortable truth. There isn't a clean line."
Therrin's stylus froze over the page.
"And when you say 'I taught them,'" Therrin asked, as softly as he could manage, "is that… literal."
The last word came back from the crystal a fraction late, softer, as if the room had repeated it for itself.
He did not say to whom. He did not say when. He did not say the rest of the thought. He left it unfinished on purpose, like a hand offered without demanding it be taken.
The mirrors held their breath with him.
OH let the quiet stretch, just long enough for Therrin to consider pretending he had not asked.
OH took his time. Not to build drama, but because this was the part where anything too crisp would feel like a lie.
"Sometimes," OH said.
Therrin nodded once, as if that single word had weight he could file.
"And the other times," Therrin tried, then stopped, then tried again, "the other times you just recognize… a familiar shape."
OH's response came with a trace of humor, a mercy. "Look at you. You can imply."
Therrin let himself smile, small. "I'm practicing."
"For the record," OH added, "I do not mind you keeping notes. I mind you keeping them wrong."
Therrin looked down at his page. Then at the reflection of the page. Then back to the page again, like truth might change depending on the angle.
"I'll correct them if I can," he said.
He closed the notebook with care, as if sealing something delicate.
Then he stood and started back toward the ship, not entirely relieved, but steadier than he'd been a moment ago.
Behind him, the reflecting pools held the sky like a second world.
And in that second world, just for a heartbeat, Therrin's reflection looked back at him with a half-step delay, like it was considering whether it had heard enough.
Later, while Lys bartered for supplies and Therrin returned to his instruments to examine the valley's light traps, Khalen found himself alone near the reflecting pools. The wind moved in sighs, and the water held the sky like a second world.
In it, he saw many returns of himself at different angles, in different moments. One with two hands. One with none.
One where his face was calm in a way that didn't belong to him, eyes steady and empty, like the worst parts had been sealed behind crystal.
And one where someone stood just behind his shoulder, close enough that Khalen should have felt the warmth of them, except there was only cold. A man's outline, familiar in posture, blurred by light. The face wouldn't resolve. The mirrors refused to give it to him.
He knelt, breath shallow.
"Curious," OH said softly. "You're the only thing here that isn't reflected properly."
"Thanks," Khalen muttered. "That helps."
"No, truly," OH continued. "These mirrors bend Breath frequencies. They're tuned to memory, not light. Whoever built this place learned to trap pieces of time."
Khalen looked again, and this time saw his reflection flicker, replaced by a faint outline of the Valkyrie's hull etched across the water. It glowed faintly, pulsing to his heartbeat.
"OH," he said, voice low, "you ever think maybe people learned too much from you?"
"Oh," the skull replied, almost wistful, "I know they did."
That night, as they lifted off, the valley below shimmered with mirrored stars. Lys leaned against the railing. "You think they actually believed that Triune nonsense?"
Therrin shrugged. "Maybe belief is just another ward. It kept them alive."
Khalen watched their reflections fade in the distance. "So did we."
The light fractured and fell away. Above, the sky swallowed the valley whole.